"A gift from Africa"

And now for something totally different...

If you like baseball -- heck, even if you don't -- and you appreciate great writing, dig into this inspiring piece by Gary Smith in Sports Illustrated. It's the most unlikely tale: an impoverished black teenager from South Africa, where cricket and soccer are the traditional pastimes, chasing his dream of playing major league baseball.

Smith is, by some accounts, the best sportswriter in the country and I've read enough of his work over the years to hold him in high esteem. So let me get out of the way and hope these first few paragraphs draw you in as they did me. (FYI, "Bucco black-and-gold" refers to the colors of the Pittsburgh Pirates. "Pirate City" is the name of the team's spring training facility.)

Word came down from above: Make the kid feel at home. Sure, said the clubbie ... but the clubbie always said sure. He bled Bucco black-and-gold, Pat Hagerty's superiors raved in reviews of his work as the Pirates' minor league clubhouse and equipment manager. He was master of a million chores, the guy who kept the radar guns juiced, the resin bags dry, the coaches' coffee hot, the lint out of the players' jocks and the alligators out of the pond at the team's complex in Bradenton, Fla. But then he paused and pondered: How the hell does a white-haired 48-year-old Irish Catholic clubbie from Steubenville, Ohio, make an 18-year-old Sotho tribesman from Africa feel at home?

The tribeman walked into Pirate City wearing a thick bush of black hair and a hoodie studded with stars. No, he didn't walk. He hopped. He skipped; sometimes he danced. He could outleap, out-ululate and outlast all the other Sotho in the dawn-to-dark dancing ceremonies around their ancestors' tombstones back home.

His head swiveled, absorbing all the dorm rooms, all the emerald fields, all the bats, all the balls; more more than he had witnessed in his life. He headed toward the clubhouse, chafing to bust out his blue-and-red glove and get cracking on his dream of becoming the first African ever to play major league baseball.

The clubbie exited the laundry room that morning last October. What language, he wondered, would a black South African speak? Even if they could communicate, what would a Pat Hagerty and a Mpho Ngoepe have to talk about?

The kid extended his hand and flashed a glittering smile. "Hello, sir!" he sang out to the clubbie. "My name is Gift!"

Read the rest of the piece here or in the Aug. 10 issue of S.I.
Photo: Trev Stair's photostream on Flickr